


The Marks of Years

by Silicu (silmil)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Ace has ALL the issues, Immortality, M/M, Marco is older than time, MarcoAce Week, MarcoAce Week 2015, but we love him anyway, or so he likes to let people think, tally mark au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silmil/pseuds/Silicu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were many things in Marco that caught Ace's attention, but two of them stood above all else. Marco had the oldest eyes Ace had ever seen on anyone. And Marco's arm was scarred from wrist to elbow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marks of Years

**Author's Note:**

> For the 5th Day of [MarcoAce Week 2](http://deer-head-xiris.tumblr.com/post/118649606810/marcoace-week-2), Song Lyrics. 
> 
> The is based on the [tally marks AU](http://stilinskiwhittemores.tumblr.com/post/99272386357) that I have been dying to write about for the longest time. For those who don't care to read the post, it's as follows: When you fall in love, you get a red mark on your wrist. If it's requited, the mark turns black. If the person you love dies, it turns into a scar. Now, prepare for ALL the feels!

_Go find me my bluebird  
Go find me somebody to love_

“Down on the Bottom”, The New Basement Tapes

 

Ace didn’t get the whole thing with love. A lot of people were attractive, yes, and being a young man with a healthy libido he could admit to noticing that. He even acted on it often enough to get himself into trouble (although, one admittedly _smoking_ hot Marine had been the _best_ kind of trouble).

But that was _sex_. It was messy and hot and fucking _fantastic_ , but it was a one-time thing (or two, or three… Ok, so Smoker, he was _very_ hot). It wasn’t _love_.

Love was dangerous. Love was ripping out your heart and putting it into another person’s hands. And love was hoping they wouldn’t tear it apart just because they could.

Nobody would want _his_ heart. He was rotten and filthy to his core, he was a demon’s son. For all he knew his heart was eaten through by worms like an overripe apple. It was probably black and ugly and not worth a single thing.

Ace never wanted to burden someone with a lump of trash like that.

And it had _nothing_ to do with the inevitable rejection, _nothing_ to do with how his heart sank every time he thought about someone he loved grimacing in disgust at his charred ugly heart and turning their back.

So, Ace got around. He met people, had sex with them, and never saw them again. Even Smoker, as _damn_ good as the man had been in bed, was little more than a memory by now. Because the moment Ace felt the inside of his wrist start to itch, he jumped on his skiff and chased the winds far, far away.

Because, no matter how Ace claimed he simply didn’t want a leash, the truth was he feared love more than the darkest cells of Impel Down. 

He took pride in his clear wrist, and buried the part of himself that wished he wouldn’t have to in a distant corner of his mind, occupied only by ‘ _Should I have even been born?_ ’ and the name of a father he despised.

Then, Ace joined Whitebeard’s crew and his very world tilted on its axis. He raged against the change, fought it, refused it for as long as he could, but he wasn’t strong enough.

And suddenly, Ace had a father he could look up to. Suddenly, he had a family he belonged to. Suddenly, he had something more than dark ambition, a tattoo, and a brother he’d have to fight one day – he had so many people around him, caring for him, laughing with him, fighting at his back, that he didn’t know what to do with himself.

And, suddenly, there was _Marco_.

Marco, who smiled lazily and patted him on the back. Marco, who wore the old man’s mark with more pride than even Ace. Marco, who couldn’t be killed, and burst into the most _brilliant_ blue flames Ace had ever seen. Marco, who was capable and kind, who held more love for his family than Ace thought a single man could fit inside himself.

Marco, who had the oldest eyes Ace had ever seen on anyone.

Marco, whose arm was scarred from wrist to elbow.

The first time Ace saw the inside of his arm, Ace had still been far too preoccupied with his own problems to think much about it. The second time, he wondered, but dismissed it as an old injury, maybe from before he ate his fruit, because injuries didn’t seem to stick enough to scar anymore.

The third time – which was apparently, the charm; was when during a party Thatch had started boasting about his own marks, showing the wrist with three bright red lines and one black standing out starkly next to them.

“Now, if you could just figure out which of your girls that is, that’d be _great_ , right?” Someone had joked, and it had digressed from there. How exactly they had started taking turns sharing stories about their marks, Ace didn’t even remember. But he would never forget the moment Thatch had grabbed Marco by the wrist, turning it palm-up and dragging it closer to the fire.

“Holly _shit_ , you’ve got a new one!” He exclaimed, staring at the bright red mark that stood stark in the end of lines upon lines of neat white scars.

Ace’s jaw all but hit the floor. He couldn’t count them right, not from where he sat, but there had to be more than a hundred. He’d seen people with a couple scratched-up combos of five, even a sailor in his 90s who boasted over 19 red marks like they were badges of honor. But Marco’s arm was _completely_ covered, so much so that the flaming red mark was pushed all the way to the tender skin on the inside of his elbow.

“Didn’t it hurt?” He only realized he’d spoken when all the pirates gathered around the fire turned to him. He might not have realized it was him at all, if they hadn’t, because his voice had been so low and wavering he’d never have recognized it otherwise.

Marco’s gaze locked on him, and his eyes were _old_ again. If Marco told him, right there and then, that he was older than time, Ace would have believed him. But there was something _other_ than age in those eyes. There was a deep emotion that hurt to even look at. Like a whirlwind of everything Ace feared mixed together and spun so fast that every one of those feelings was unrecognizable from the rest. But there was also warmth. There was, still even after all of that, love.

“It did. Every time, eh,” Marco spoke later, when it was just the two of them. “But the pain was worth it, too. _Every_ _time_.”

That was the night Ace was finally told just how old Marco was. It was the night he learned even the man himself had stopped counting his years after the first few hundreds. It was the time he learned how long Marco had tried to fight and run away from love, just like him, before he’d learned to cherish it for as long as it lasted.

It was the night he learned this was Marco’s first new mark since he’d joined the old man’s crew.

Marco sat by his side for hours, and answered his unending questions with painstaking patience, never once flinching away from a topic, never once making Ace feel like he was intruding. He opened his past like a book and guided Ace as he shifted through the pages, and he hid _nothing_.

Yet, Ace couldn’t find the courage to ask who the mark was for. Not for a long time.

But as the months past, he wasn’t just _Ace_ anymore. He was _Ace, Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates_ , all capital letters and heavy responsibilities attached, and not a _single_ regret. He was turning faces and raising murmurs all over the Grand Line and beyond, the flame of his fame reaching the farthest corners of the world.

And in Pops’ words, he found courage. Enough of it, to stand before all the other Commanders, and with fists clenched and fear in his eyes, to speak his _other_ name, the one he _refused_.

There was silence. There was shock. And then, there was acceptance. There wasn’t a single _one_ of them who regarded him differently. Not one of them said he shouldn’t have been born. Ace felt like crying and he didn’t even know why.

And in the midst of the ensuing chaos, Marco looked at him from across the room with such respect and, _god_ , adoration, that Ace felt his breath hitch and his wrist _itch_.

But even with all his newfound courage, all Ace could do was to not run. Even as the line on his wrist darkened, skipping the red tinge he’d always feared, and turning into a black to mirror the letters on his arm, his fear still held him paralyzed. Even when he could feel Marco’s eyes on him, when the man would seek him out, would touch him so casually, would smile at him so easily, Ace’s uncertainty wouldn’t dissipate.

Until the day he saw Marco’s arm again. No, that wasn’t right, because Marco hadn’t really had arms at that point. Instead, there had been those flaring blue wings spread on either side of his body, throwing flames in every direction.

And there, under the bursting blue of his flames, there was a single point of darkness. As Ace stood, frozen in place, he recognized the imperfection in the bend of the wing, just where the elbow would be on a human hand. The mark. The _black_ mark.

And there was nothing more to stop him. There was nothing to be uncertain about, nothing to doubt. He gathered up all his insecurities, all his fears, and with his heart in his hands he marched up to Marco.

“So,” he said, not bearing to look into Marco’s eyes, “this thing tells me you love me too…?”

He didn’t mean it as a question, but his voice betrayed him, fading out in the end and leaving it all too obvious how out of his depth he was. But as a hand rested against his cheek (the left hand, the one that was attached to the left arm with all its scars), he looked up. He felt lost in all the years that peaked back at him from behind Marco’s eyes, but as the man leaned in, he let it take him. He felt Marco’s lips cover his own, and Marco’s mark tingle on his wrist, and hoped, stupidly, that he wouldn’t just become another one of Marco’s scars.


End file.
